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Slide Deck — Manager Workshop

MANAGER & LEADERSHIP TRAINING SERIES

Managing the Room

Group Dynamics & Team Leadership for Managers

Half-day workshop  •  Grounded in Social Psychology research  •  For people managers & team leads

1

Today’s Agenda

01
Why Groups Underperform
Social loafing, process loss & groupthink
02
Group Polarization & Decision-Making
Why teams land on extremes
03
Leadership Styles & Fit
Matching style to the situation
04
First Impressions & Attribution Errors
Fairer, more accurate feedback

+ Personal action planning and wrap-up

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Why This Matters

1
Managers run meetings and make group calls constantly, but rarely learn how groups actually behave.
2
More people in the room doesn’t mean a better decision — the structure of the discussion decides that.
3
This course gives you the mechanics behind team decisions, leadership fit, and fair feedback.
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MODULE 1

Why Groups Underperform

Source: Ch. 9 — Group Processes

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What Groups Discuss — and What They Miss

The hidden profile problem

SHARED INFORMATION
  • Facts everyone in the group already has
  • Comfortable to repeat — feels productive
  • Reinforces the group’s existing lean
UNIQUE INFORMATION
  • Facts only one person holds
  • Feels riskier to bring up
  • Often the fact that would change the decision

Social loafing compounds this: when contributions aren’t identifiable, individual effort quietly drops too.

5
EXERCISE • 20 MIN

The Hidden Profile Exercise

1
Each group member gets a briefing: some shared facts, some facts only they hold, about a fictional hiring decision.
2
Discuss and reach a decision without comparing full briefings.
3
Reveal: the correct call required combining everyone’s unique facts.
4
Debrief: what structural change would have surfaced the missing information?
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KEY TAKEAWAY

If a meeting only confirms what everyone already agreed on, it isn’t a discussion — it’s a rehearsal. Structure meetings to force unique information into the open.

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MODULE 2

Group Polarization & Decision-Making

Source: Ch. 9 — Group Processes

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Why Groups Land on Extremes

1
Group polarization
Discussion strengthens the group’s average initial lean — it doesn’t moderate it. Cautious groups get more cautious; risk-tolerant groups get riskier.
2
Two driving forces
New supporting arguments surface (persuasive arguments), and people shift to match where the group’s values seem to be heading (social comparison).
3
Practical translation
Capture individual positions privately before group discussion starts. The gap between that average and the final group call is worth examining.
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LIVE DEMO • 20 MIN

Live Polarization Demo

1
Present a moderately risky business scenario. Everyone privately rates their risk tolerance 1–10 before any discussion.
2
Average the private scores and set them aside without revealing them yet.
3
Small groups discuss and agree on one group score.
4
Compare each group’s score to its own pre-discussion average — groups usually land further from the middle.
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KEY TAKEAWAY

Group discussion doesn’t average opinions — it tends to amplify the room’s initial lean. Capture individual views before the discussion, not just after.

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MODULE 3

Leadership Styles & Fit

Source: Ch. 9 — Group Processes (Leadership in Groups)

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Two Leadership Orientations

Neither style is universally “better”

TASK-ORIENTED
  • Clear direction, structure, standards
  • Fits highly favorable or highly unfavorable situations
  • Best when the task is ambiguous or urgency is high
RELATIONSHIP-ORIENTED
  • Support, morale, interpersonal trust
  • Fits moderately favorable situations
  • Best when the team is established but needs cohesion

Situational favorability — task clarity, leader power, team relationships — decides which orientation fits. Personality alone predicts leadership success surprisingly poorly.

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EXERCISE • 20 MIN

Style-Situation Matching

1
Review four team scenarios that vary in task clarity and team cohesion.
2
In small groups, choose a task- or relationship-oriented approach for each, and justify the choice.
3
Full-group share-out: discuss where the “right” style flips as the situation changes.
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KEY TAKEAWAY

There is no universally “best” leadership style — only the style that fits this team, this task, and this moment.

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MODULE 4

First Impressions & Attribution Errors

Source: Ch. 4 — Social Perception

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Why We Misjudge Other People’s Setbacks

1
First impressions
They form fast and linger, coloring how a person’s later behavior gets read — long after their actual performance has changed.
2
Fundamental attribution error
When explaining someone else’s behavior, we default to character (“they’re careless”) and underweight situational factors (“priorities were unclear”).
3
Self-serving bias
The opposite direction for our own outcomes: we credit our successes to skill and blame our failures on circumstances.
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EXERCISE • 15 MIN

Attribution Rewrite

1
Read three scenarios of employee “failures” written in character-based language.
2
In pairs, rewrite each with a plausible situational factor — without dropping accountability.
3
Draft one line of feedback that names the factor and still holds the person accountable.
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KEY TAKEAWAY

The story you tell about someone’s failure — character flaw or bad circumstances — determines whether feedback helps them improve or just makes them defensive.

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Your Action Plan

Return to the decision or feedback moment from your pre-work:

Where might process loss or groupthink have shaped this decision — what unique information didn’t surface?
Did the outcome look more extreme than the individual views going in?
Did the leadership style I used fit this team and task, or was it just habit?
Is there a dispositional assumption in this feedback? What situational factor would a fair observer add?
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The room shapes the decision.

Structure it on purpose.

Thank you  —  Questions & Evaluation

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